Introduction: The night shift guarantees the continuity of care with activities that may vary across wards, thus the intensity of care and the organization of night activities may vary.
Aims: To describe the night nurses' activities and to analyze their frequency, answer times and activities performed by nurses when answering to patients' needs.
Methods: Nurses on night shift in a neurology and surgical ward were observed for 7 nights. Night activities were recorded (type and time), distinguishing planned and unplanned activities. Data on the number of complex patients, number of calls (time, reason, activities interrupted and time needed to answer) were also collected.
Results: Overall 55 patients in neurology and 46 in the surgery ward and 4 nurses per night were observed. In neurology ward nurses were mainly involved in basic care and surveillance, while surveillance and the administration of drug therapy where prevalent in the surgical ward. In neurology, on average patients called once every 50 minutes, mainly in the first hours of the shift while once every 24 minutes in the surgical ward, during tha all night, mainly for pain and drug treatments. Nurses answered to patients calls in less than 2 minutes.
Conclusions: The different intensity of activities is influenced by patient conditions but also by the organization of care. In both wards planned activities and patients calls are distributed during the all night.